Hello !
I'm a college student, I'm in second year of Biology studies and I plan on buying a Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 R7 laptop at the end of the week. The problem is : I want to dualboot it with a Linux, and I was wondering how Zorin was on such devices, especially about drivers support, is it lacking behind Ubuntu ? Can I use the touch screen and stylus perfectly fine ? Is tablet mode and rotation detected correctly ? Can I make shortcuts or scripts to change Zorin layout (from zorin appearance) automatically when switching between tablet mode and laptop mode ?
Also, even tho I study biology for now, I'm planning on attending a Bioinformatic Master if everything goes fine, so I wanted to know : what would be the better fit for a mainly text writing and drawing device for college (with a tiny bit of coding here and there on my free time) with a very good layout for tablet and laptop experience ?
Would it be Zorin 17 Education or Zorin 17 Pro ?
Thank you for taking the time to read this, have a nice day !
Hello there! I am always happy to hear about students, who are furthering their education, so that they can work in a sector, where they feel they can be the most beneficial, you have my deepest respect.
With that said, the version of Zorin OS that would be most beneficial to you, would be Zorin OS Education. It should have all the APPS already loaded, that you would need for schooling. Anything it doesn't have, you can download and install from the software store.
To make things easier, you can buy a Star Labs computer, which comes with Zorin OS already on it, making life easier for you. I believe they give you the specific choice of OS version you would like. But I can totally recomment Star Labs, they have my full support in their mission statement.
To be more specific, since you asked for touch screen controls for drawing, you might be interested in the Star Lite computer, more then the full notebook solution. Its up to you which you want to go with, but that does seem to be the direction you are leaning, based on your requirements.
I wish you good luck, and don't forget to update us on which one you choose. And I thank you personally, for paving the way for the younger GenZ generation, to show them they can apply themselves if they want to, and when you do, it usually results in good things.
Hello again !
Thank you very much for your advices and recommandations !
I was thinking on buying the starlite originally, but after some reflection, I've come to the conclusion that a laptop acting line a tablet might be more suitable for me rather than a tablet acting like a laptop. Especially since drawing would be useful for schemes only, like schemes of the photosynthesis systems for example, or of muscular tissues, but most of the time, the laptop part is mostly more useful to me and I need a very longlasting battery since I even take my exams on pc (thx dysgraphia).
As for installation, I'm not worried, it's been a year now since I've got into Linux, with Mint to be precise, the installation process is not worying me at all, I was just wondering if Zorin could handle screen orientation and decent stylus support, but it was a dumb question, since the starlite supports zorin out of the box, that meant that Zorin surely supports stylus, touch screens and screen orientation.
Thank you for your help with the zorin version choice, can't wait to try zorin education !
Zorin OS 17 ships with kernel 6.8 at this time, and it's planned to increase this to the latest HWE version (6.11) within the next month or two.
For reference:
I want to mention that the Linux kernel in Zorin OS 17 is expected to be updated to version 6.11 next month or in March, ahead of the launch of Zorin OS 17.3.
Zorin OS 17 Education might just be for you, honestly. It's like Core, but you get cool educational software. If you want a macOS desktop or something, you can get the Pro, but be warned that it will cost you $48.
I was planning on using Educational. I don't like MacOS UI organisation anyway.
Still, it's too bad you can't, at least, get the additional theming of educational if you have a pro licence.
If we don't count the 3 hours spent across 3 days in total last year on 16 core to try Linux nor the installation and "very small" tinkering of my mother's pc on Zorin Lite 16 so she doesn't need to by a new pc for just reading mails and watch some old photographs, then yes, it's my first on Zorin.
